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Sen Bob Graham: We Had Same Info as Bush -- from May 27, 2002
EFL (somewhat)

[Editor’s note: This article orginally appeared on the cover of the May 27, 2002, issue of HUMAN EVENTS.]

Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration.

"Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn’t see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did."

Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President’s Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."

Graham’s comments contradicted combative statements made recently by the Democratic congressional leadership, and confirmed White House assertions that the only specific threats of al Qaeda hijackings known to the President before September 11 came from a memo dating back to the Clinton Administration.
snip

But as early as May 16, it had already emerged that most of the information in Bush’s August 6 Presidential Daily Briefing--an official intelligence document--had in fact been given to the congressional committees in the form of the Senior Executive Intelligence Digest (SEID), a more widely published classified document.

"Mr. Gephardt said that we didn’t have information," said Rep. Porter Goss (R.-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on May 16. "In fact we do have it. And it’s just apparently that Mr. Gephardt didn’t know about it."

At that point, Democrats claimed that Bush’s intelligence report had information warning of possible hijackings by Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, and that Congress did not receive that particular information.

But the Democrats’ criticism appeared to be further undercut by Graham’s confirmation to HUMAN EVENTS that the committee did have the same intelligence. Administration officials had earlier said the hijack warnings in Bush’s August 6 briefing were merely an analysis based on old intelligence from 1998.

The committees were indeed aware before September 11 that a major attack could come soon, so much so, that Sen. Graham told CNN’s Kate Snow
quot; on the afternoon of September 11
quot; that he was not suprised.

"I was not surprised that there was an attack, was surprised at the specificity of this one," Graham said in the interview, hours after the attacks.
snip

As Democrats appeared to back away from the attacks on Bush over the weekend, Republicans went on the offensive to capitalize on an expected backlash. The Republican Study Committee, a group of about 75 conservative Republicans, released a memo detailing House Democrats’ overwhelming opposition to intelligence funding since 1996. According to the memo, 154 House Democrats voted to cut the U.S. intelligence budget in 1996, while 158 Democrats did the same in 1997. Although fewer Democrats voted to cut the intelligence budget in 1999 (only 61), almost all opposition to intelligence spending came from Democrats.

The memo also quotes several Democrats opposing intelligence spending, including Rep. Maxine Waters (D.-Calif.), who advocated the abolition of the CIA on the House floor in March 1997.

In addition, a HUMAN EVENTS survey of lawmakers found that few--even among Republicans--would have been willing to act decisively on threats of hijacking by Muslim extremists. Not one Democrat surveyed would countenance the idea that President Bush, upon learning of the al Qaeda hijacking threat, should have suspended the visas of young men visiting from nations that are al Qaeda hotbeds--even though this measure would likely have prevented the attacks of September 11.

Few support that action even now, after September 11, when new warnings of attacks by al Qaeda have been issued by FBI director Robert Mueller and Vice President Cheney.
Posted by: Sherry 2004-04-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=30193